Upgrade Your Skills or Lose Your Benefits – Labour

Upgrade Your Skills or Lose Your Benefits – Labour

Jobseekers Claimants who lack basic English, maths and ICT skills should be made to take up training or lose their benefits, Labour says.

The logic behind the calls stem from the fact that poor Functional Skills levels of many jobseekers are stopping them from getting work.

Should the Labour Party come to power in the next election, they’ve announced their intention to enforce a rule that would mean all new jobseeker claimants have to sit a basic skills test within six weeks. In addition to this, Labour would provide people who have worked and then lost their jobs with higher initial rates of JSA. They hope that the policy would help people to earn their way out of the cost-of-living crisis, rather than being stuck between low paid work and benefits.

The Conservatives claim that Labour are simply copying an existing policy which states that jobseekers aged between 18-21 without basic GCSE level English and Maths skills have to sign up to 16 hours a week of training or have their benefits cut.